Institute History
Description
To maintain support for warfare, governments strive to keep the enemy as an abstract idea; once the opposition is perceived as consisting of flesh and blood—and having a common humanity, intellect, spirituality, and grief—a nation's enthusiasm for bloodshed tends to fade.
Since Vietnam, war has been transmitted by television into living rooms—and what is perceived there can have a powerful impact on public support for military engagements. Jehane Noujaim's startlingly courageous Control Room provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American POWs, the station showed the world everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want it to see.
In Noujaim's film, Al Jazeera is portrayed as the home base of dedicated journalists, whose passion for truth and open information are easily the equal of their American counterparts, and who pay a deadly price for it. Control Room is an astonishing film that challenges our complacency and, perhaps, our assumptions.